Scientific Controversies: Time's Arrow

Time is intangible but stubbornly persistent. We move forward, inevitably and relentlessly. We can't grab a moment in time. We can't point to it once it's gone. Is time real or an illusion? Will we ever defy the arrow of time, stop its flow or go backwards? Astrophysicist and writer Janna Levin invites physicist/philosopher David Albert in conversation with science writer James Gleick to consider the possibilities from time travel to time's arrow. Recorded November 2014 as part of the Pioneer Works Scientific Controversies public program series.

Featuring:

David Albert (Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia, author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience and Time and Chance)

James Gleick (author of Chaos: Making a New Science and The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood)

Janna Levin (Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard/Columbia, author of How the Universe Got Its Spots and A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines)

Additionally, Clocktower's own Jake Nussbaum interviews the group in our studios.

About The Series:
Major scientific discoveries can disrupt the traditional order, leaving scientists adrift in concepts that resist familiar intuitions and beliefs. Of the new ideas that emerge, some will be wrong and some will be right. Honest and open scientific controversy helps disentangle one from the other. Eventually, one side of a debate grows in strength and finds confirmation in experiments, while the other atrophies. But both sides of a controversy contribute to the breakthrough of actual discovery – when the utterly abstract barges into the realm of the concrete. This series celebrates that passionate spirit of scientific debate.

What Is Quantum Reality? Does Time Exist? Will Dying Black Holes Explode in Firewalls?
Major scientific discoveries can disrupt the traditional order, leaving scientists adrift in concepts that resist familiar intuitions and beliefs. Of the new ideas that emerge, some will be wrong and some will be right. Honest and open scientific controversy helps disentangle one from the other. Eventually, one side of a debate grows in strength and finds confirmation in experiments, while the other atrophies. But both sides of a controversy contribute to the breakthrough of actual discovery – when the utterly abstract barges into the realm of the concrete. This series celebrates that passionate spirit of scientific debate. For the Pioneer Works series Scientific Controversies, we take a look at profound topics at the frontier of physics that have inspired unresolved debates.